President Macky Sall's candidacy for the office of UN Secretary-General places the link between peace and development at the centre of its proposals. Too often, the international community arrives with peacekeepers where, years earlier, schools, jobs and services were what was needed.
Security pays the bill for missed development. The crises that call on the Security Council rarely arise overnight. They rise where the state has withdrawn, where the young have found neither work nor horizon. By the time the guns speak, the hour of development has already passed.
Emergency costs more than prevention. Keeping the peace through heavy operations costs more than the investments that would have preserved it. We pay dearly, and late, for what we refused to fund early and cheaply.
To prevent is to develop. A road, a school, a clinic, a job hold a region more surely than a contingent. Lasting peace is built with the same tools as development.
What the Secretariat can carry. The Secretary-General can join two agendas the Organization has kept apart for too long, that of peace and that of development, put prevention before intervention, and remind the world that no peacekeeping operation has ever replaced the state it came to stand in for.
Experience in multilateral negotiation. Twelve years as head of state and the chairmanship of the African Union in 2022 underpin these commitments. That experience explains why the vision statement filed with the United Nations frames its proposals as obligations: peace, security and development conceived together; a renewed multilateralism; stronger governance of the Organization.
Africa at its heart, the world in its sights.
The United Nations' work on peace and development is public. Read all public positions at www.mackysall.net